Eleven scores big audiences for live Taiwanese sport

Sports broadcaster Eleven Sports Taiwan has hailed the strong audiences generated by its global live streams of Taiwanese basketball and baseball last weekend.

Eleven showed live coverage of the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s three-game series between Fubon Guardians and Rakuten Monkeys from Friday to Sunday, and the Super Basketball League play-off game between Yulon and Pauian on Saturday. Coverage was available within Taiwan on the broadcaster’s linear, OTT and Twitch channels, and also streamed worldwide via the company’s Twitter account @ElevenSportsTW.

Eleven reported that the three live CPBL games generated a total of 3.6m views on Twitter, and the live SBL game nearly 500,000. Across all the video content that Eleven streamed on Twitter over the weekend, including replays of the games, the service had 6.3m views. Among the viewers was Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who tweeted a picture of herself – and her cat, Cookie – tuning in for one of the games.

Cookie & I tuned into the Taiwan @CPBL’s Opening Day, from home of course, to cheer on our outstanding athletes. Tune in every Tuesday-Sunday with us! pic.twitter.com/5ehp26xfUi

The company also reported that 60 per cent of the international audience on Twitter came from the US, and that more than 1.4m in Taiwan watched its sports coverage on Twitch over the past week.

Eleven Sports Group CEO Luis Vicente said: “It’s been a truly rewarding experience to be able to offer our audience a return to live sport…In such a difficult period for the world and for sports, it is amazing to see some light at the end of the tunnel and to be able to bring the joy of live sport back to fans around the world.”

Eleven will this week show live coverage within Taiwan and globally on Twitter of the six-game SBL Finals between Taiwan Beer and Yulon Luxgen, with the first game taking place today.

The CPBL and SBL are among a small group of professional sports leagues in the world currently running matches, with almost all other play halted due to Covid-19.

Eleven Sports Taiwan launched in 2016. As well as the domestic baseball and basketball league, it has rights for international properties including English Premier League football and NBA basketball. It is part of Eleven Sports Group, the nine-territory international sports broadcaster owned by sports business entrepreneur Andrea Radrizzani’s Aser Ventures.

The slew of media-rights deals agreed for the Korean K League ahead of its recent restart did not generate large revenues for international distributor Sportradar. But the league hopes to capitalise, in the years to come, on the boost to its profile, as one of the first competitions to restart after Covid-19-related shutdowns.

International sports broadcaster Eleven Sports Network has struck a rights deal for coverage of the Formosa Dreamers in the Asean Basketball League, as well as the regional club competition’s play-offs.

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